Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#241

Post by dejv » Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 9:36 AM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #215

dejv wrote: post #168

I am maintaining one application in construction industry space. That application was created 25 years ago by construction worker that never wrote single line of code before, but because he caused a lot of problems on construction site they give him Programming 101 book and let him build it. 15 years later the app was close to half milion lines long of huge bowl of spaghetti code. Only comments in whole codebase were…

I have to salute this construction worker for building a solution that is apparently so valuable for the business that they can’t simply replace or rewrite it. This probably means that it solves a real problem for them, and adding 30.000 lines of code per year without any formal training or much tooling is no small feat either. I understand the criticisms and laughs here from the “real” software developers, but damn…

It is impressive indeed. The coding started just in time when Windows 95 were released. There was no Stackoverflow and they don't even really have internet back then. The programmer (as far as I know) didn't even speak English so he has access to book or two in German language and code snipets in help section of Delphi. At the same time creating applications with UI just started, so there was very little experience available, espcially in rural Austria.

Company did tried to migrate to other software few times, but the software is just too specific for given industry and legislation of small country that the companies who tried to create similar software usually went bankrupt soon.

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#242

Post by dejv » Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 9:41 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #202

dejv wrote: post #168

I am maintaining one application in construction industry space. That application was created 25 years ago by construction worker that never wrote single line of code before, but because he caused a lot of problems on construction site they give him Programming 101 book and let him build it. 15 years later the app was close to half milion lines long of huge bowl of spaghetti code. Only comments in whole codebase were…

what kind of problems do you cause at a construction site that do not get you fired but reassigned to Programmer with programming 101 book?

Probably fall from roof few times or was not really handy with hammer or something.

The company is quite fascinating, they started around 1945 and during the years they've became small conglomerate. There are three or even four generations workign together and once they like you as a person they will find something for you to do.

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#243

Post by croo » Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 9:43 AM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #42

We have absolutely no idea how to write code. I always wonder if it's like this for other branches of engineering too? I wonder if engineers who designed my elevator or airplane had "ok it's very surprising that it's working, let's not touch this" moments. Or chemical engineers synthesize medicines in way nobody but a rockstar guru understands but everyone changes all the time. I wonder if my cellphone is made by mac…

There is one fundamental difference between software engineering and any other type of engineering. It's that the feedback of the rules that govern the outcome is instant and received by multiple human senses.

If you hit something with a hammer the result and response is instant. You can feel the nail went deeper before you look, you can hear you hit the head correctly before you think about it. You can feel the vibration and hear and feel and see the wood crack before you could read a sentence about it.

You don't have to compile the hammer and run the hit and read the result from the screen and if you logged the right things you will see something about the result based on what you logged but not quite everything because that would be an unintelligible mess. If you compiled the right version of hammer that is.

You don't even know for sure if you are holding a hammer. Of course that's not called a hammer but a unique tool you downloaded because they said it is the new best tool of the year - and there are several famous new tools every year. Though you cannot be sure if that tool helps in your job until you try to use it as you don't know if you are using a hammer or an excavation machine and both can be suitable for the task one being slightly bigger though.

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#244

Post by cat-turner » Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 9:43 AM UTC

In my past life I was an oceanographer at a consulting company. Essentially we wrote Matlab code that processed data we get from ocean and meteorological models. Many of these models, used by NOAA, are all written in Fortran. While most were well documented, one thing you could not get around is the use of parameters for these models ( think of global variables used everywhere) and a never ending game of go-to statements. I had to figure out how this one flood model worked... literally had to read 5,000 lines of Fortran. This is what we use to determine potential flood impact from hurricanes, today. Software written for oceanography is a whole other beast.

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#245

Post by mb_72 » Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 9:45 AM UTC

At one stage a company I worked for was considering licensing the code for a school time-tabling application, rather than paying the company to do the (fairly minor) changes we required to meet (non-USA) state requirements. The company was started by a couple of teachers, the same people who wrote their product. It was 10s of ks of Pascal code, but with not a single variable name or function name that made any sense; everything was A, AA, AA1, X, XX, XX2 etc. I spent a few days looking at it, then recommended we keep paying the somewhat steep cost for the modifications. Then at least if anything broke it was on them to fix it.

Incidentally we had a small falling out with this company, and they were refusing to update their executable until this issue was resolved. This looked like affecting some hundreds of schools and their timetables. I did some checking, and it turned out their 'non-updated' executable was doing a simple date check on the local PC; if it was past a certain date, the executable refused to run. So I did a quick hack in our application that involved: - setting the local PC date to prior to the 'cutoff date' - running their executable with the required parameters, and grabbing the results - setting the local PC date back correctly

This led to interesting negotiations as they were puzzled why their 'gun to our heads' no longer appeared to be working, and things were resolved to the benefits of both parties soon after.

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#246

Post by danmaz74 » Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 9:49 AM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #49

eismcc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least there are tests!

Tests that run for 30 hours is an indication that nobody bothered writing unittests. If you need to run all tests after changing X, it means X is NOT tested. Instead you need to rely on integrations tests catching Xs behavior.

I beg to differ. Having to run the full test suite to catch significant errors is an indication that the software design isn't (very) modular, but it has nothing to do with unit tests. Unit tests do not replace service/integration/end to end tests, they only complement them - see the "test pyramid".

I think it's important to point this out, because one of the biggest mistakes I'm seeing developers do these days is relying too much on unit tests (especially on "behavior" tests using mocks) and not trying to catch problems at a higher level using higher level tests. Then the code gets deployed and - surprise surprise - all kinds of unforeseen errors come out.

Unit tests are useful, but they are, by definition, very limited in scope.

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#247

Post by alorimer » Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 9:49 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #223

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what kind of problems do you cause at a construction site that do not get you fired but reassigned to Programmer with programming 101 book?

Perhaps he played too much Minecraft and tried building a Turing machine from the materials on the construction site?

C can't be that different from redstone right?

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#248

Post by ilovetux » Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 9:50 AM UTC

nathan_long wrote: post #67

overcast wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but you're acting under the premise that "if we just did it 'right' the first time, we wouldn't have this mess". What I'm saying is that only under very few circumstances does it ever workout that way. Particularly with long standing systems and their software. It just builds over years, nothing you can really do about it.

> Sure, but you're acting under the premise that "if we just did it 'right' the first time, we wouldn't have this mess". I think you're right that every long-lived code base will have warts. And I don't think that means that the original builders were wrong-headed. But if you've got a decades-old system that nobody understands anymore, you've got a huge liability. You can't ship features to compete, you can't fix bug…

You may not want to reinvent the wheel, but you have to change the tires.

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#249

Post by danmaz74 » Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 9:51 AM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #113

Izkata wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sentiment among members of a former team was that automated tests meant you didn't need to write understandable code - let the tests do the thinking for you. This, and stuff like your story, are why I don't trust people who promote test-driven development as the best way to write clean APIs.

TDD doesn't think for you, it merely validates your own existing understanding/mental model and forces you to come up with it upfront. This is hardly a thing to be mistrustful about, unless you work with idiots.

> TDD doesn't think for you

I totally agree, but I met several programmers who think the opposite.

Re: Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?

#250

Post by voldacar » Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 9:51 AM UTC

As a budding programmer (hobbyist), what can I do not to fall into the mistakes others talk about in the comments? Is there any particular set of mental habits that could lessen the chance of spaghetti occurring, or is it just a matter of when rather than if?